Karel Segers, who Billie and I had the pleasure of working with through the 2015 ScreenACT Accelerator Pod, has a couple of posts up about Aaron Sorkin. The first talks about the Sorkin Masterclass that has had ads blanketing Facebook (spoiler: Karel says to do it, but for the fun of it more than the learning of it). The second picks apart his favourite Sorkin scene, from Charlie Wilson’s War. You should go read both.

Sorkin remains my all-time favourite screenwriter (I know, I’m not alone in that). Karel linked to this hour-long interview with Sorkin that’s a must-watch if you like his work and are curious about how he does it. Happy viewing.

A song in a musical works best when a character has to sing— when words won’t do the trick anymore. The same idea applies to a long speech in a play or a movie or on television. You want to force the character out of a conversational pattern. In the pilot of The Newsroom, a new series for HBO, TV news anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) emotionally checked out years ago, and now he’s sitting on a college panel, hearing the same shouting match between right and left he’s been hearing forever, and the arguments have become noise. A student asks what makes America the world’s greatest country, and Will dodges the question with glib answers. But the moderator keeps needling him until…snap.

From there he shows the musical beats of the long monologue that marks the first episode of The Newsroom. A good read.